Ellingwood Point
Southwest Ridge - Class 3
From Colorado 150 we drove just under 5 miles on the Lake Como Road and slept in the back of my Toyota Tacoma. It rained... HARD... most of the night with thunder and lightning. We climbed Ellingwood's class 3 Southwest Ridge and then traversed the ridge to Blanca's summit. The rain from the night before made the Lichen on Ellingwood's exposed Southwest Ridge slick. This made the climb a little tougher than we had anticipated. It was much better once the sun had a chance to dry everything out. The route from the truck was 11 miles round trip and 5250 vertical and took us roughly 10 hours.
Partners: Robby Grace, Kristi Henes, Mike Poland, Jim Griffiths, Solo
Kristi's 14er Finisher!
Here is a link for the GPX file from our trip.
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From Colorado 150 we drove just under 5 miles on the Lake Como Road and slept in the back of my Toyota Tacoma. The route from the truck was 11 miles round trip and 5250 vertical.
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Ellingwood from the trail below Blue Lakes
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Sunrise behind the Blanca Ellingwood Ridge from below Blue Lakes
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Heading to Ellingwood's Southwest Ridge Alex rock hops on relatively stable talus.
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Alex scrambling ledges and gullies to the Southwest Ridge
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Kristi traversing an exposed ledge
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Our ridge run started where you see sun on the ridge behind Kristi.
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Alex climbing on the ridge
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Mike having fun with exposure
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Kristi on the edge
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Rainbows in the clouds above Pioneer Lake on the north side of the ridge
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Kristi scrambling on the ridge with amazing views of Little Bear and the traverse to Blanca which we had done a few years back
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Big exposure on both sides of the ridge. Alex scrambles
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Still a long way to go we would climb the horn below/left of the summit
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Kristi climbing to the horn
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From the top of the horn we would climb the west face of Ellingwood to the summit
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Now THAT was a fun route! Would definitely do it again
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Celebrating Kristi's finisher with Little Bear Blanca traverse
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Summit fun
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Mike, Jim, Alex
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Little Bear Blanca Traverse... if you don't mind exposure this is a must do route
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Left to Right... Lindsay, Blanca, Little Bear. The Blanca Group is pretty amazing
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Kristi making her way down the class 3 ridge between Ellingwood and Blanca
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Alex down climbing the Ellingwood Blanca ridge
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The views of Ellingwood are amazing from Blanca... and we were there... so we decided to climb Blanca too!
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You can really notice the 300 foot difference between Ellingwood (14,042) and Blanca (14,345) from Blanca's summit
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Little Bear and the traverse to Blanca
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A beautiful view of Lindsey and Huerfano from Blanca
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Down climbing the Blanca's ridge
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From the Blanca Ellingwood ridge... Huerfano (in the clouds), Iron Nipple and Lindsey. The lower section of Gash Ridge running between Lindsey and Blanca
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and that's a wrap... now back to the truck. I will spare you pictures of the awful Lake Como Road
